Passage 2
Americans no longer expect public figures, whether in speech orin writing, to command the English language with skill and gift. Nor do theyaspire to such command themselves. In his latest book, Doing Our Own Thing: TheDegradation of Language and Music and Why We Should ,Like, Care, JohnMcWhorter, a linguist and controversialist of mixed liberal and conservativeviews ,sees the triumph of 1960s counter-culture as responsible for the declineof formal English.
Blaming the permissive 1960s is nothing new, but this is not yetanother criticism against the decline in education. Mr. McWhorter’s academicspeciality is language history and change, and he sees the gradualdisappearance of “whom”, for example, to be natural and no more regrettablethan the loss of the case-endings of Old English.
But the cult of the authentic and the personal ,“doing our ownthing”, has spelt the death of formal speech, writing, poetry and music. Whileeven the modestly educated sought an elevated tone when they put pen to paperbefore the 1960s, even the most well regarded writing since then has sought tocapture spoken English on the page. Equally, in poetry, the highly personal,performative genre is the only form that could claim real liveliness. In bothoral and written English, talking is triumphing over speaking, spontaneity overcraft.
Illustrated with an entertaining array of examples from both highand low culture, the trend that Mr. McWhorter documents is unmistakable. But itis less clear, to take the question of his subtitle ,why we should, like, care.As a linguist, he acknowledges that all varieties of human language, includingnon-standard ones like Black English, can be powerfully expressive-there existsno language or dialect in the world that cannot convey complex ideas. He is notarguing, as many do, that we can no longer think straight because we do nottalk proper.
Russians have a deep lovefor their own language and carry large chunks of memorized poetry in theirheads, while Italian politicians tend to elaborate speech that would seem old-fashionedto most English-speakers. Mr. McWhorteracknowledges that formal language is not strictly necessary, and proposes noradical education reforms-he is really grieving over the loss of somethingbeautiful more than useful. We now takeour English "on paper platesinstead of china". A shame, perhaps, but probably an inevitable one.
According to McWhorter, the decline of formal English_______.
